If you walk north past Buckingham Palace and on into Green Park, continue north till you get to Piccadilly street. Cross here and head west. Soon you will get to the corner where the original Hard Rock Café was founded in London just a couple blocks from Hyde Park.
Original you say? Like many, I thought Hard Rock Café was an American idea. And it is.
In 1971, Americans Isaac Tigrett and Peter Morton were living in London and were hungry for a good American burger. So they opened up their own diner in an old Rolls Royce dealership and called it Hard Rock Café. I visited this Hard Rock in the late 80’s when I was stationed in the UK and again in 2019.
Over the years as we traveled around, whenever we see a Hard Rock Café we tend to stop in for either a drink or something to eat and we always pickup a guitar pin. Now I have to admit the food is just average and there are better places to visit but the atmosphere is the main attraction. Plus we now tend to seek out a Hard Rock whenever we go somewhere and our pin collection has grown because of it.
I went to the Hard Rock website and pulled off some interesting tidbits of their history.
Paul McCartney and Wings were the first live music performed in the London location as an impromptu concert.
Carole King penned a song, “Hard Rock Café”, as an ode to Hard Rock.
The collection of guitars hung on the wall may have begun when Eric Clapton requested to hang his guitar over his bar stool in London to mark his spot. Not to be one upped. Pete Townshend sent a package with a note stating “Mine’s as good as his! Love, Pete.”
The memorabilia pieces reached 80,000 in 2015.
2021 will be the 50th anniversary which is amazing since the original lease for the London start up diner was only for 6 months because the owner didn’t think they would last.
Hanging on our wall is a case full of Hard Rock guitar pins from around the world. Most of the places depicted we have visited personally and some our daughter has. Our pin collection does contain a 30 year anniversary collection of pins which we got in San Diego. Pins included are from Hawaii (Maui and Honolulu), London, Cozumel, Orlando, Dublin, La Jolla, New York, San Juan, San Diego, Paris, Seattle, Edinburgh, Istanbul (My daughter's), San Francisco, Glasgow, Cayman Islands, and St. Thomas.
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